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Window with Lace Curtain by Niki Eleftheriadi' |
Watching for paradise
GREEK artist Niki Eleftheriadi’s work is well known in the galleries of Athens and Paris where her picturesque imagery is enjoyed for its almost childlike magic.
Now Eleftheriadi is having her first exhibition in the UK at Gallery K in Hampstead.
Curator Ann Eastman describes Eleftheriadi’s stylised, almost naïve visual language as deceptively simple – a deliberate technique used by the artist to express the old-fashioned
nostalgic quality of island life.
Her paintings depict ordinary everyday moments, in the manner of a child asked to describe his or her day – going for a walk with her friend, looking out of the window, picking flowers, eating fruit, wearing a virginal white dress.
There are comparisons with Frida Kahlo – most of the paintings include herself in the story but unlike Kahlo they are not obsessive self-portraits. Like Kahlo however, her paintings convey a sense of yearning, watching life pass by, waiting in solitude for something to happen.
This is reflected in Eleftheriadi’s life. About two years ago, she decided to live a solitary life, shared only with her son’s iguana and a little black cat that occasionally appears in her paintings.
“He and the white cockerel signify the only masculine presence in my life,” she explains, “while the fruit, the pickled flowers and occasional butterfly symbolise the ephemeral nature of love and life itself”.
For Eastman, the artist is “re-stitching her life, brushstroke by brushstroke”.
“The delicately applied oil paint of the landscapes expresses enjoyment of the serene simplicity of life as it was in her childhood, before the tourists arrived,” she says. “There is the bitter sweet taste of nostalgia; with a hint that perhaps tomorrow is when paradise can be regained.”
Sunita Rappai
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